strong foreign policy rests on a strong economy and the view around the world that the american political system is responding to the challenges that it needs to respond to to put our economy on a sound footing, which means both investing in the future and addressing these fiscal cliff issues that have been talked about. so when we compete against china and other countries, it's not just that we're competing in goods. it's also our model, our economic model is competing with their economic model. we have to make sure that government responds and meets the challenges. i think the president's trying to do this. i believe that after the election, if he wins, he will make a major effort to address this because the economic consequences are substantial and going off the fiscal cliff would deal a huge blow to our national security and our foreign policy stature in the world as well. we all have an interest in working this out in a constructive way and not waiting until a crisis occurs in order to do that. >> one day you said to me, look, you know, the u.s.'s model was the model for the world. t